Pvt lab owner booked for pre-natal tests

GURUGRAM: The Gurugram police on Sunday booked five people, including the owner of a private lab chain, for allegedly conducting unlawful tests relating to pre-natal diagnostic techniques, including running regulated tests without necessary checks and employing unqualified persons for collecting and analysing samples. Health department officials also said that the collection centres of the lab was allegedly not registered and did not maintain any records of the tests.

Officials said three centres of the private lab -- in Gurugram sectors 63 and 14, and Rohini in Delhi -- were allegedly involved.

Police said a case under IPC sections 420 (cheating), 406 (criminal breach of trust), 34 (common intention) and 120 B (conspiracy) and several sections of the Pre-conception and Pre-natal Diagnostic Techniques (Regulation and Prevention of misuse ) (PCPNDT) Act, 1994, was registered at Sector 65 police station on Sunday.

Deepak Kumar, station house officer of Sector 65 police station, said that this is for the first time that such a case has come to Gururgam police notice. “We have registered the case and suspects are yet to be arrested,” he said.

The health department said a team of three doctors and a clerk -- constituted by Dr Virendra Yadav, civil surgeon, Gurugram -- investigated the lab’s alleged malpractices.

The team sent a decoy patient to the lab which unveiled noninvasive prenatal testing (NIPT) -- a well-known genetic testing technique primarily meant for detecting genetic abnormalities in the foetus -- being conducted at the lab through their collection centres in Gurugram and Rohini in Delhi.

Such testing can only be carried out as per conditions and guidelines laid down in the PC-PNDT Act, including being registered under the Act. Additionally, the Act mandates that the test can be conducted only on women who have undergone two abortions and are above the age of 35 years.